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Old 16-04-2019, 09:34   #19
Chris
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Re: Notre-Dame cathedral: Firefighters tackle blaze in Paris

I was at York Minster the other week, which was famously struck by lightning and partially burned down in 1984. The tour guide told us that between a third and a half of all the surviving medieval glass in Europe was in the windows at the Minster. That proportion is now somewhat higher (though much of ND’s glass actually dated from the 18th and 19th centuries).

York Minster lost only the roof of its south transcept whereas ND seems to have lost the lot. The Minster’s South Transcept roof took 4 years to replace and includes the Blue Peter Boss, which depicts an astronaut and the moon. And on that point - it’s easy to look at these buildings and see them as ancient monuments, literally set in stone and unchanging. They aren’t - they took centuries to build, and often sit on top of the foundations of earlier church buildings that have all but vanished. Once completed in their present form their interiors are constantly being altered, added to or conserved or restored. Nobody wanted this to happen to ND but the building will survive and this will become a part of its history, just as I was able to point out the Blue Peter Boss to my kids and tell them that story.
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